


Accidental

by SimplexityJane



Category: The Blacklist (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-06
Updated: 2013-11-06
Packaged: 2017-12-31 16:02:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1033611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SimplexityJane/pseuds/SimplexityJane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tom was never supposed to fall in love, but years of living with someone can make anyone a little dull.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Accidental

He’s given a name and a photo, a list of likes and dislikes, and he raises his eyebrows at Gina. She smirks, shows him the paycheck that’s come in the mail, and his heart skips a beat.

“That’s seven zeroes,” he says, and she nods. “All for some girl?”

“Not some girl, _the_ girl,” Gina says, and slides another photo across the desk. He’s spent years cataloguing faces, the ways people who share blood share expressions, and this is everything he’s come to expect of a close relation, father or brother at least. “That’s Reddington.”

“Holy shit,” he says, because Reddington is a legend. A traitor, and dangerous, but—“I thought his daughter died in the fire, a year after he left?”

“Her body was never found.” Gina’s grin is mischievous and he kisses it, crawls over her and they fuck on the floor like teenagers, high with the adrenalin of the big one, the big break. Then he takes the passport with his name on it, arranges for a box to be moved into the States, and flies to meet Elizabeth.

It’s been years, and Tom has everything he could have ever wanted, Liz and a house and escape options and the possibility of a family. He and Gina are professionals, they know when their time is up, and he can’t afford a mistress. She used to work alone, she said on that last job. She can work alone from now on. He cleaned up the gun and put it in the box, just in case.

“I love you,” he tells Liz. He feels sucked into her orbit, her radiance, and she always smiles at him when he says it. The words are even true, after a fashion. Elizabeth and Thomas Keene are everything he was told never to expect, first in an orphanage and then in an army, and having that is intoxicating. They moved into a house, even, and for Tom (he purposefully forgets the other name, but that’s normal for an undercover mission), the city boy through and through, it’s amazing.

Then Raymond Reddington shows up in their life. He connects with Liz after decades, after she was trained to believe that her father is just a conman who hurt people who didn’t pay loans for him. It isn’t fair, because Tom gets shot and Red knows that he was hired years ago, but it isn’t a job anymore.

It’s never been a job.

They go home and Liz believes him. They make love and she _believes_ him. Over her own father. Over everything screaming at her that he’s lying, that he was the one who installed the carpet when they first got there. If he didn’t love her, he’d want to _strangle her_ she’s so naïve.

He isn’t surprised when Red stops him in a park, his shadow with him as always. He sits, flinching like an honest man, and Red smiles.

“There shouldn’t be artifice between us,” Red says, and Tom rolls his eyes, prepares a tirade because that’s what Thomas Keene would do, he would rail at Reddington until he got angry enough to stomp away. “Please, save the theatrics Stepan, we both know why we’re here.”

“My name’s _Tom_ ,” he says, and Reddington rolls his eyes.

“Your name, or one of your more popular aliases, is Stepan Zanetakos, husband to Gina Zanetakos for approximately three months. She kept the name, you did not. Now, since we understand each other--”

“Do we?” he interrupts. “Because if you understand me, you know that I _know_.”

Red’s eyes are the sort of cold blue Liz’s never get as he replies, “Yes, of course you do. That would have been part of the bargain, of course. Fifty million dollars to marry a woman and have children with her, of course you know who she used to be.”

“You came back for Liz,” he says. Red nods, pursing his lips. “Because you thought I was going to hurt her.”

“I _know_ you’re going to hurt her,” Red says. He’s matter of fact, like the best sorts of clients and handlers. He has Liz’s eyes and Liz’s chin, and Tom fell in love with Liz because she’s like that too. Now that she’s killed someone, she’ll be even better, and the part of Tom that’s Stepan, that’s George and Nikolas and Sasha, it’s excited at that prospect. “Either through your own actions, or by dying, as you nearly did. Very ineffective, I must say. And while harsh lessons are perfectly acceptable in life, you love Elizabeth far too much to met them out.”

Tom stares out at the happy families, some with single parents but more with two, happiness he wants and might never get to have, and he wants to cry. They trained it out of him before he knew how to drive, though, so he doesn’t.

“If I leave she’ll be hurt more,” he says. “She’s already facing a hearing at work. She’ll lose her job if they find out — about either of us.”

Red has a mask he wears just like Tom does. He nods and hands him a transmitter, though it looks more like it jams frequencies.

“The CIA is watching your house,” Red says. “As you can no doubt imagine, that is quite irksome to me.” Tom rises, angry to his bones. “Tom.”

Reddington looks old. He isn’t, just under fifty from what Tom’s heard, possibly younger, a young parent, an analyst who found something and became a traitor. It must have been important, because Tom has seen the ultrasounds of his little girl and he can’t think of ever abandoning her, even if he had to do another job to protect her.

“That’s only your first task,” he says. “You belong to me now.”

He’s had many masters. Raymond Reddington isn’t the most brutal or demanding, but Tom has a feeling he’s the most likely to come after him if he screws up. Tom gets it.

He puts the jamming device in a friend’s purse and gets it in the house, and he finally feels secure in his skin.

Liz kisses him, naïve.

**Author's Note:**

> I like Tom, but I know he's lying.


End file.
